Fukigen na Mononokean Episode 07 Review

Hello folks! It’s been yet another week, and we probably had one of the most interesting episodes in this show. It had the most development!

Let’s start from the very beginning! As you might have noticed, every single episode of Fukigen na Mononokean starts with a direct connection to the previous one. It starts seconds after the previous one was over. I find this to be a nice trick that keeps in you touch with the show and the characters. You also get reminded of what happened in the previous episode, and you don’t feel like it’s been already a week.

Plot

Anyway, the episode starts the moment when Abeno and Hanae exorcise the eel-like youkai and, strangely enough, Abeno thanks Hanae and praises him for a job well done. Now our poor Hanae is rejoiced to tears and slapped back to reality. How typical for this anime, right?

In this episode we get to meet Zenko again. Let me remind you that Zenko is the cute, short girl from the Buddhist temple. Apparently, she is also from the same high school, and so they meet again. Smells like plot development to me! The thing I love the most is the reminder of Hanae being unable to go to school for the first week and starting being called “The Nursery room’s Hanae-chan”. Right after the joke though we get to see that not everything’s that good. Zenko has been bitten by something, and now there are signs of teeth and some sort of weird tattoo on her arm. But only Hanae and Abeno can see it besides her. Nobody could see the bite marks, not even the doctors, so she comes to find Hanae. The thing is that after getting bitten, Zenko is able to see the youkai. At first Zenko thought that she was bitten by a dog, but her description is more fit for a fox. At that moment, a weird youkai fox appears on Abeno’s shoulder and claims that the one who bit Zenko was him. He also claims that he will take the marks away only if they play hide-and-seek with him.

It also seems that the fox knows Abeno, and may have even been pretty close to him. The fox keeps calling Abeno by his first name, Haruitsuki. In Japan you don’t really call people by their first name unless you’re really close. The thing is that Abeno has no memory of the fox. Anyway, they decide to meet up at Zenko’s family’s temple and play hide-and-seek there after class.

Of course, Hanae’s luck is with him. He is kept in school after classes and when he arrives at the temple it’s already dark. There is another good joke in which we learn that our poor boy Hanae is not afraid of youkai but for some reason he is afraid of ghosts.

The hide-and-seek seems to never end, since the fox keeps hiding every time she is found. I am not going to tell you in detail how their game keeps going on, you can find it out yourself after watching the episode, but instead I’m going to theorise on the story development.

Comments

In the end, Abeno finally remembers the fox. They met many years ago, and his name is Yahiko. The fox mentions a person/youkai called Aoi, who was the previous owner of Mononokean. We get to know that Abeno became Aoi’s helper when he was seven years old. Yahiko says that there are many rumours going around the underworld, and that he heard a rumour that Abeno killed the previous owner of Mononokean to take their place. The episodes ends with the fox asking if that’s true.

What do you think? Is it possible that Abeno really killed his previous master to take their place? Do you think the fox has come to seek revenge? And what kind of relationship do you think these two have had when Abeno was still seven years old?

I honestly don’t believe that Abeno killed Aoi. I think that either Aoi merged with the room, and that’s why we get a talking room, or Aoi disappeared leaving the Mononokean to Abeno. I also think that Yahiko and Abeno have been best friends and that Yahiko doesn’t really want to hurt Abeno. But hey, we will find out soon enough won’t we?Now then, I’ll stop here. The rest is for you to think! See you next week folks!